WarCry Chat and Patch Servers are Up!

Merric posted this on September 7th, 2010.
Categorized as Dev Chat, Dev Team, Events, Free to Play, Kate Paiz, LotRO News, Sapience, jwbarry, turbine, victorie, warcry.

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Just a brief note, patch servers are up so go start updating if you can!

Secondly, today the WarCry network hosted a chat with Turbine members:

  • Kate “Nereid” Paiz – Executive Producer
  • Leo “Ransroth” Zelevinsky – Engineering Team
  • Jen “Jalessa” Gordy – Systems Team
  • Joe “jwbarry” Barry – Content Team
  • “Victorie” – Account Management Team
  • “Sapience” – Community Team

WarCry ChatFor those who were not able to attend we have a transcript here in PDF form.

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Dev Diary: LUA Scripting Goes LIVE!

Merric posted this on September 2nd, 2010.
Categorized as Dev Team, F2P, General, add-ons, dev diary, lua.

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Narrel writes today about how LUA scripting came about for LOTRO in the most recently released Dev Diary.  He was hired as a game systems engineer for LOTRO in late 2007 and eventually “…became the ‘go-to guy’ for UI on my team.”  Dissatisfied with the current UI he eventually started working with “ForsakenArcher” and “Agiclaw”, to of the internal tools engineers at Turbine, and they began discussing, planning and working on a prototype for the LUA system.  To paraphrase, after internal testing, meetings, and with help from “Frosty” they were given the approval and the opportunity to introduce it with the Volume 3.2 testing.

So what does LUA do and what is it capable of?  Well, quite a bit actually, but the implementation in LOTRO has actually been limited on purpose by Turbine.

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Dev Diary: Crafting in Free-to-Play (Volume 3.2)

Merric posted this on August 31st, 2010.
Categorized as Codemasters, Dev Team, Free-to-Play Beta, LotRO News, crafting, dev diary, faction, reputation, turbine.

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One of the things that I personally glossed over some are the changes coming up to Crafting in the upcoming release of Free-to-Play; which is ironic since I have a ton of crafters.  For those of you who may or may not remember, Jewelers and Cooks had quite a few changes with the release of Volume 3, Book 1.  With Volume 3.2 Weaponsmiths and Woodworkers are having some revisions which “…introduces an arsenal of new crafted weapons…” that target not only their stats but their damage types as well.  However, it’s important to note that no existing crafted weapons will be changed.

Also, many existing Weaponsmith and Woodworker recipes will now be multi-output (meaning they can create different versions of the same item as can be seen in a previous post) as well, allowing players to better adjust the weapons to have stats that would be more relevant to their playing style.  I’m vastly in favor of multi-output recipes and I am very much looking forward to these options.  Mostly because it’s fairly frustrating to want to create a weapon for a character and the type that I want is meant for a different playing style.

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Dev Diary: Captain Revision

Merric posted this on August 26th, 2010.
Categorized as Codemasters, Dev Team, F2P, Graalx2, LotRO News, captain, dev diary, turbine.

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Wow, there sure is a flood of information coming in about Free-to-Play isn’t there?  Today, with the release of Ken “Graalx2” Burd’s developer diary on Captains, is no exception.  Although a lot of this can be heard about in our Beta Roundtable, let’s go ahead and recap what we can expect to see for Captains on September 10th.

First off, some of the issues that Turbine saw with Captains were:

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Dev Diary: Vault Changes

Merric posted this on August 25th, 2010.
Categorized as Dev Team, F2P, General, Ransroth, beta, dev diary, storage, vault.

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vault1A Dev Diary written by Ransroth was released today concerning the upcoming changes to the vault system with the upcoming release of Free-to-Play on September 10th. There have been quite a few changes to the system about which people may find themselves conflicted; I know I was, but we’ll get to that later.

First, let’s take a look at some of the changes to the systems  and the new features that it will provide for all players:

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Dev Diary: The Wardrobe System

Merric posted this on August 24th, 2010.
Categorized as Codemasters, Dev Team, F2P, LotRO News, cosmetics, dev diary, turbine, wardrobe.

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The latest Developer Diary by Elliot "Avon" Gilman concerning the Wardrobe System that will be released with the upcoming Free-to-Play release on September 10th.  For those who are unaware of what the Wardrobe system might be, it is a “…system designed to store the appearances of these items and includes some unique features not seen with shared storage or the vault.”

So how will the Wardrobe be used?  Well first off, it is not exactly storage.  Think of it as an area where you can “copy” an item so that it is accessible by all of your characters.  The original item will stay in its original location (such as a character’s backpack).

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Dev Diary: Volume 3, Book 2

Merric posted this on August 20th, 2010.
Categorized as Dev Team, LotRO News, dev diary, volume III.

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Today heralded the release of a Dev Diary by Jeff “MadeofLions” Libby focused on the story, tech and features of Volume 3, Book 2 which is set to release with the upcoming Free-to-Play launch on September 10th. Be warned; if you don’t wish to have any knowledge of the storyline whatsoever then skip down to the “New Technology” section where there will be a discussion of some of the new technology Turbine is using to dynamically change a player’s experience with questing.

Story Components

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Dev Diary: Instances 2.0 (Part 5)

Merric posted this on August 18th, 2010.
Categorized as Codemasters, Dev Team, Free to Play, LotRO News, dev diary, dungeon, instances, jwbarry, turbine.

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Today, sees the last installment from Joe “jwbarry” Barry discussing the revamps we’ll see concverning dungeons in the upcoming F2P release.  In this installment he discusses the Great Barrow Cluster aka, Othrongroth.  Joe explains that since the Great Barrows is the “first real introduction to instances” in LOTRO that it needed some attention to ensure that players had a positive experience. Also, since the dungeon starts at level 20, it also allows for them to test their scaling technology on a lower level dungeon as the rest were level 50+.

It seems that one of the primary reasons to divide the dungeon up was that each time a different instance was launched it put a great strain on the servers due to its size.  Also, it allows for players to be able to commit to an instance run without having to worry about being able to complete all of the dungeon or having to skip major parts.  Due to the preexisting quests and stories within the instance, the decision on how to break up the dungeon felt natural:

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Dev Diary: Instances 2.0 (Part 4)

Merric posted this on August 11th, 2010.
Categorized as Codemasters, Dev Team, Free-to-Play Beta, LotRO News, dev diary, instances, jwbarry.

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Today’s post from Joe “jwbarry” Barry is all about Helegrod and the changes that we will be seeing with the upcoming changes in Free-to-Play.  This is a fairly long and detailed post, mostly because it was a fairly detailed process.  What was a huge outdoor raid has now been segmented into several raids, scaled down from 24-man to 12-man content in most areas, and then re-vamped to the new Instance System.  Joe gives a great explanation into most of his actions and the reasons behind them which makes it a good read.

After reading the whole post, I have to say Helegrod seems to have returned with a vengeance.  It sounds extremely tough, and the challenge modes sound challenging.  I will definitely be paying attention to see how long it takes for the raiding guilds to complete these instances on-level.  That aside, considering that these are adjustable by level, it might be possible for kins to run through these on a lower level to acclimate themselves to the fights until they’re ready to do them on-level.

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Dev Diary: Instances 2.0 Part 3

Merric posted this on August 4th, 2010.
Categorized as Dev Team, Free to Play, General, dev diary.

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Today saw the release of Part 3 of 5 in Joe “jwbarry” Barry’s Developer Diaries concerning the re-vamping of instances in the upcoming release of “Free to Play”. Today’s was specifically focusing on the Eregion and Annúminas instance clusters. For those who might not have reached this part of the game yet, the Annúminas instances are located on the southern bank of Lake Evendim and are three fellowship sized instances, while Eregion is just to the south of the Trollshaws and west of Moria.

Annúminas

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